The head of the Army’s Space and Missile Defense Command is a “huge believer” in the service’s exploration and development of high-altitude surveillance balloons despite his initial skepticism.

The idea of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance high-altitude balloons “sounded crazy to me,” Lt. Gen. John Rafferty, commanding general of Space and Missile Defense Command, told reporters on Wednesday at the Annual Association of the U.S. Army conference in Washington, D.C. His opinion changed quickly after he and SDMC Command Sgt. Maj. Rickey Jackson went to Morocco for a training exercise on the ISR balloons a while back.